MediprospectusAI
Co-designing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) that can adapt a home television set to increase social connectivity and address loneliness.
About the project
This project aims at co-designing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) that can adapt a home television set, that is universally useful for enabling older people to connect with befriending services. TEA will enable older people in Essex and Cornwall, to increase the cohesion of social connection and address loneliness by facilitating engagement. The development of TEA will be guided by older people through participatory design and can also be easily remembered by the end-users by its name- “TEA”.
Our research team, with extensive experience in co-designing products with older people, have successfully worked on a large European project on age and technology. We will be co-designing this television adaption tool (TEA), with a panel of older people, some befriending volunteers, academic researchers and small businesses. This application will be also accessible through smartphones. We envisage that older people in Essex and Cornwall will benefit from the TV-enabled befriending service; however, the real impact will only be known after we have analysed the data we collect.
Significantly, the project will provide the first systematic insight into the value of the different models of befriending services for addressing loneliness and isolation in older people. The findings will therefore be useful for government, local authorities and others looking to address loneliness and isolation in older people through befriending and can be replicated nationwide as well as globally.